Redbox Customer Service is Golden

Often companies ignore the importance of empowering staff without "customer service" in their title. They think that the employees who aren't formally charged with customer interaction don't need to be customer focused. They usually don't invest much (any?) time or money to train these people. And they nearly never give them any tools to help ease any customer annoyance.

Imagine my surprise, then, at the customer focus of a
Redbox video vending employee named Susan.

When I drove up to the outdoors Redbox, I noticed the door to the vending machine was open. A woman's tush was all I saw so I waited a moment, then said, "Can I just give this video to you?"

She seemed startled, but friendly. "Sure. Did you want to rent another?" I did. She told me to go ahead and log in on the screen, even though the door was open. It took my request but no video was vended. Susan tried to figure out what was wrong. She called her tech support number. They said to try again. She got out a stack of red cards with free video promo codes on each and handing me 5 said, "I'm sorry for your inconvenience." Wow!

Another woman walked up but the machine wouldn't take her return with the door open. She asked if Susan could take the return. Susan said sure, took the video and gave the woman a few free rental cards for her waiting.

I'd used a promo code for a free video but we weren't sure if I should enter it again. She suggested I call Redbox's customer service line. I did. Yes, the code was used, so the rep said she'd email me another code. I tried a new code. Success!

Susan peeled off a few more red cards, saying, "I'm really sorry this took so long. Indeed, it had taken 15 minutes to complete a 1-minute transaction. But I wanted to see how this was handled so I stuck around.

Susan was a shining example of how an employee who isn't supposed to have much customer contact did a stellar job. Was she encouraged by her manager to be generous with the free cards if a customer is inconvenienced? Or did she decide to liberally dole out the cards on her own? I don't know. She didn't come across as someone who was slick and well-trained. She was sincere and empathic. Whether it was by nature or training, she delivered more than I expected.

"Thankfully, we have a number of customers who understand the importance of what we call ""internal customer service."" They invest in training for all their employees so each person understand's his or her job and how it ultimately affects the customer whether, like Susan who just happened upon a customer, or someone who needs to work with another employee internally to keep the customer happy. For example, we did customer service training at Price Pfister. They not only trained their customer service reps, but included the credit and collections team and a group from the warehouse who make sure correct shipments go out on time, packaged well. It was a great insight for people to see what other teams did and they developed some great processes for working together to better serve customers. Check out Customer Care Tip #4 for more info.
"

"Thankfully, we have a number of customers who understand the importance of what we call ""internal customer service."" They invest in training for all their employees so that each person understands his or her job and how it ultimately affects the customer. For example, Price Pfister not only trained their customer service reps, but included the credit and collections team and a group from the warehouse who make sure correct shipments go out on time, packaged well. It was a great insight for people to see what other teams did and they developed some great processes for working together to better serve customers.

Other customers like Hologic and Sun use an on-line program for new hires so that each person understand the customer care value of the company and how their job--no matter what it is--impacts the customer. You never know when a ""Susan"" can make or break your company's image!
Customer Care Tip #4 tells more. "

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Pilla Nageshwara Rao

September 19, 2017 05:29 PM

"Dear Rebecca,

Customer is given tool for the usage of product ,he will get the benefit from the
product and in turn give mouth publicity to others who may be prospective
customers.This shall increase the publicity for the product and as well as
marketability.
Hence training tool given for the usage of product shall definitely increase the
Marketability of a product. "

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Sara Moore

September 19, 2017 05:29 PM

"Rebecca,

That's quite a story! I've definitely had experiences encountering ""back-of-the-house"" employees (and even some customer service representatives) who have been much less personable than Susan. It's good to know that Redbox has employees who put extra effort into interactions with customers (free promo codes is a great way of easing customer inconvenience!).